Gas To Liquids Technology, A New Approach for Marketing Natural Gas

Ahmed ANTARI -SONATRACH Hassi-Messaoud -ALGERIA Touhami Mokrani -University of the Western Cape- South Africa
It is well known that the most of undeveloped gas reserves in the world are located in zones that are difficult or far from the consumption areas. About half of the worlds proved natural gas reserves may not find a market in the near future because of their remote locations. In order to satisfy the world wide natural gas demand, which grows continually and rapidly, these large quantities of gas have to be exploited by using different techniques. The natural gas can be better utilised as a source of chemicals in place of its predominant use today as a fuel for domestic and industry, its potential for the production of ethylene and liquid hydrocarbon fuels has not been fully realised. It provides numerous economic and environmental advantages to its end-users in power generation, heating and transport fuels. The challenge for Petroleum companies is the recovery of gas quantities that are found in remote locations. The options that are conventionally looked at include gas pipelines and LNG. But, with improvements in the economics of GTL growing demand for high quality fuels, petroleum companies are increasingly looking to GTL as an option for augmenting gas production and accelerating exploitation of the worlds natural gas resources. GTL technology is a possible means of processing and using remote and associated gases in an economically and environmentally acceptable manner. It allows economic operation at smaller scale and produces products that can be traded as commodities on world markets. In addition, it contributes for the reduction of the greenhouse effect gases. Approximately 11 % of this remote gas is re-injected, and unfortunately, another 4 % is flared or vented, the cost of transporting these gases to markets can be prohibitive. More than 25 TCM of gas reserves are potentially suitable for monetization by GTL Technology. With its continuous development, GTL industry could meet a significant fraction of the worlds fuels and chemicals; the production will reach 1-2 MMb/d by 2015. For comparison LNG plant investments over the last 30 years represent the equivalent of about 1 MMb/d of GTL capacity. The very large reserves of natural gas which often are found in remote regions, and those which are currently being re-injected, flared or vented, could serve as a feedstock for the production of chemicals and as a source of energy well into the 21st century. - GTL can be a significant energy source at competitive prices and can improve the world global energy security by expanding the world-wide gas utilisation. - GTL blends can significantly reduce motor vehicle emissions and therefore decrease emissions of GHG as well as of a variety of pollutants such as sulfur, aromatics, NOX and Carbon. Though prospects for the emerging GTL in the 21st century are promising a number of challenges. The more important of these are the following:

- Economics of GTL - Oil price outlook - Co-operation with refiners - Excelling in developing clean energy and high quality products from natural gas.
The reduction in syngas production cost, which amounts for nearly half of the overall capital expenditure for a GTL project, can significantly contribute to reduce the GTL process cost.

The main factors that condition the development of GTL trade are the use of high quality fuels in order to reduce emissions (KYOTO PROTOCOL), the necessity to exploit natural gas reserves located in zones that are difficult or far from the consumption areas in order to satisfy the increasing demand, the fuel cycle greenhouse consequences of GTL use, and the low cost of gas to liquids. For Algeria, GTL technology to convert natural gas to useful chemicals offers several challenges and could be an economical issue to monetize the produced associated gas by 2020, to eliminate gas flaring and to reduce costs of the entire gas chain. The natural gas with high CO2 content can be better utilised as a feedstock for a GTL production plant. Associated gas recovery in Algeria has improved thanks to gas re-injection and closing gas lift production. Since 1973, twenty two (22) projects were constructed to recover more than 80% of associated gases corresponding to 32 billion cubic meters per year. Investments made, amounted to 50 billion AD (more than 578 millions US$). By 2006, the total recovery rate will then be 93% with the construction of new facilities. The use of GTL technology in Algeria will contribute for the exploitation of remote oil and gas fields and those considered uneconomical as well as of the flared gas recovery program started in the early seventies. Hassi-Messaoud, the largest oil field in Algeria (owned by the state oil and Gas Company SONATRACH) contains about 70% of the countrys proven oil reserves, it produces about 450,000 bbl/d of 46 API crude, down from 550,000 bbl/d in the 1970s. The current GOR is approximately 700, and due to the gas breakthrough, the Gas Oil Ratio may reach 1200 in 2010 and 2400 in 2020, therefore the associated gas production rate which is actually about 45MMM3/D will rise to more than 80MMSM3/D by 2020. The gas re-injection facilities will not be able to handle all produced associated gas in the coming years. Long distance pipeline projects to transport these large quantities of gas to markets involve large investments and can be difficult to amount. To achieve economics of scale, this gas has to be monetized by using another production option. This poster describes the technical and economic aspects of GTL technology and its potential impact on energy markets and environment. An attempt to describe the possibility of using GTL technology in ALGERIA for monetizing the associated gas and eliminating the gas flaring will is presented.

References
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